As LSU plays its home football opener, reminders of a region's trauma

BATON ROUGE, La. - A gurgling sound coming from the bathroom roused Alisa and Russell Gage Sr. out of bed around 4 a.m. Days of storms had swelled the nearby Amite River in rural Baker, La., 20 minutes north of Baton Rouge. The water had climbed over ridges, rushed through forests, blanketed roads, surged up a sloped lawn and infiltrated the Gage's elevated house. Russell Sr. discovered sewage belching from the toilet.

Over the next six to seven hours, water reached above their knees and seeped into their boots. They called emergency hotlines more than 30 times. Operators said they were sending help, but no one arrived.

Then, Alisa peered out her kitchen window at the road in shock.

"Boy!" she shouted, both fearful and exhilarated.

Her son, Russell Jr., a wide receiver at LSU, emerged out of the flood. He had bolted campus along with linebacker Devin Voorhies, driven until police barricades halted them, trudged 5 miles against a rapid current and hoofed the final mile home through water up to his chest.

"Mom, I'mma get you out of here," he said when he reached the front door.

More than 7 trillion gallons of rain fell in Louisiana and Mississippi over eight days last month, according to WeatherBell Analytics. Unprecedented flooding caused $8.7 billion of damage, wrecked more than 40,000 homes and killed 13 people, agricultural and political officials said.

Gage almost got himself killed on his rescue mission, but his decision to leave football training camp hours before a scrimmage and ignore the ramifications three weeks prior to the season opener showed the self-reliant, help-in-any-way-possible attitude flexed throughout LSU athletics during and after the floods.

"In times of need, we're not just going to call somebody and ask for help," said LSU volleyball coach Fran Flory, a Baton Rouge native.

Players and coaches from LSU's 16 varsity sports teams aided in relief throughout the region, the school said. Flory brought her players to help gut a devastated home and barked orders at them like it was a breakneck practice.

"We're going to go into the community and rip out drywall, carry out soaking wet carpet that is dripping into our shoes and down our clothes, and we don't care, because our people need help," she said.

On Saturday night, LSU's first home football game offered a commemoration and respite for victims of the catastrophe. The crowd observed a moment of silence and a scoreboard video showed the flood relief work of LSU students.

LSU beat Jacksonville State 34-13, highlighted by Tre'Davious White backpedaling, twisting and tossing off defenders to return a punt 60 yards for a score.

Senior defensive end Christian LaCouture, who was sidelined with a season-ending knee injury, identified with both the players and flood victims inside an invigorated Tiger Stadium.

"We really need that," he said.

LaCouture's family lives in Denham Springs, an area east of Baton Rouge that floods smothered. Flooding is so historically rare there that his family — like about 80 percent of Louisiana homes, according to the Louisiana Department of Insurance — did not have flood insurance.

Use the slider to explore flooding in the area

"It looked like you put 10 grenades in there and just let it blow up," he said.

Water upended couches into the bedroom. Humidity warped the wood floors and peeled paint off the walls.

"All these memories you have in a household, and all of a sudden everything's gone," LaCouture said. "I saw a lot of our family pictures on the ground cracked and folded up from the water soaked in. It makes you upset."

Although raised in the northeast, LaCouture bonded with Baton Rouge since moving there in 2013. When he totaled his car trying to drive it through the floods, a Good Samaritan in a truck insisted on giving him a ride. LaCouture offered the driver the $30 in his wallet.

"No, man," the driver said. "This is what people do down here."

LaCourture's status as a LSU football player helped garner nearly $20,000 in crowd funding, a bit of help for the $150,000 in repairs he said his home requires.

"To go through something like this, it takes a lot of strength, but the people here in Louisiana will fight through it," he said. "They've done it before with (Hurricane) Katrina."

Kevin Wagner, a former diver at LSU in the late 1970s, who for 28 years has produced the school's televised athletics, lives near LaCouture in a subdivision where the streets are still lined with massive rubble piles like the aftermath of a war zone.

Wagner's mountainous refuse spans across the front lawn of his one-acre plot. Stacks of timber, ceramic tiles and furniture bury more precious possessions, like the four electric scooters his grandchildren used to ride. A refrigerator with the freezer ajar attracts a swarm of flies to rotting corn and chicken breasts.

Adding to the disorder, out-of-state contractors canvass the neighborhood with hundreds of tasteless signs advertising their demolition businesses and cops routinely arrest looters, including some fellow victims trying to augment their wreckage to increase insurance payments.

Wagner got his wife, daughter and three grandchildren out of his house during the floods after flagging down two strangers in a 17-foot bass boat who were rescuing people.

"Will we ever be able to go back in our house?" Wagner remembered thinking.

The men passed Wagner's family off to a car ride that transported them to an emergency shelter at a church, where they spent 21/2 days with 200 other victims.

"Which is something I never ever expected to have to do," Wagner said, his voice softening. "It was a very humbling experience. Heartbreaking. Scary. Stressful."

Wagner missed his first home game in nearly three decades on Saturday to move into a rent house.

"I wish I had my life back," he said.

As LSU plays its home football opener, reminders of a...

1of 27Kevin Wagner, assistant athletic director for network television operations, surveys debris piles on his street, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in Denham Springs, La. Wagner will miss his first LSU home game in 28 years because of the flooding.Photo: Jon Shapley, Houston Chronicle

9of 27Kevin Wagner, assistant athletic director for network television operations, surveys debris piles on his street, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in Denham Springs, La. Wagner will miss his first LSU home game in 28 years because of the flooding.Photo: Houston Chronicle

13of 27Kevin Wagner, assistant athletic director for network television operations, surveys debris piles on his street, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in Denham Springs, La. Wagner will miss his first LSU home game in 28 years because of the flooding.Photo: Jon Shapley, Houston Chronicle

14of 27The home of Russell Gage, Jr., is seen Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in Baker, La. Gage's parents and sister managed to save some of his trophies and memorabilia from rising floodwaters.Photo: Jon Shapley, Houston Chronicle

19of 27Kevin Wagner, assistant athletic director for network television operations, surveys debris piles on his street, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in Denham Springs, La. Wagner will miss his first LSU home game in 28 years because of the flooding.Photo: Houston Chronicle

20of 27Russell Gage, Jr., wide receiver for the LSU Tigers (39), walks off the practice field at LSU, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in Baton Rouge, La. Gage and his teammate, Devin Voorhies, waded through floodwaters for several miles to rescue his parents.Photo: Jon Shapley, Houston Chronicle

21of 27Russell Gage, Jr., wide receiver for the LSU Tigers (39), is seen after practice Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in Baton Rouge, La. Gage and his teammate, Devin Voorhies, waded through floodwaters for several miles to rescue his parents.Photo: Jon Shapley, Houston Chronicle

22of 27Alisa Gage looks at some of her son's trophies, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in Baker, La. Her son, Russell Gage, Jr., and his roommate, Devin Voorhies, both of whom play football for LSU, braved rising floodwaters to help Gage's family escape.Photo: Jon Shapley, Houston Chronicle

23of 27Dennis Denicola, who owned an LSU fan store, walks by a few of his items that survived the flood, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in Walker, La.Photo: Houston Chronicle

24of 27Kevin Wagner, assistant athletic director for network television operations, is seen in his flooded home, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in Denham Springs, La. Wagner will miss his first LSU home game in 28 years because of the flooding.Photo: Jon Shapley, Houston Chronicle

25of 27Magazines and other LSU memorabilia that belonged to Dennis Denicola sits in a trash pile at his house, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in Baker, La.Photo: Houston Chronicle

26of 27Kevin Wagner, assistant athletic director for network television operations, stands between rubble piles that line the streets of his subdivision, Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016, in Denham Springs, La. Wagner has seen police officers arresting looters trying to steal from the refuse.Photo: Hunter Atkins, Houston Chronicle

Unlike Wagner, the floods thrust Dennis and Denise Denicola closer to LSU. Dennis had ingratiated himself to the program as an upholsterer for alumni and one of the world's biggest LSU memorabilia collectors.

At his shop, he had LSU greats such as Shaquille O'Neal, Tommy Casanova and Paul Dietzel, who coached the famed 1958 championship football team, autograph purple metal lockers. Those survived the floods. The rest of his 10,000-piece collection did not.

With his house of 36 years and dream car, a 2003 Corvette, paid off, Dennis planned to sell most of the memorabilia, which he estimated was worth $250,000 because so many items were unique, and retire in three years.

"Now I gotta start all over," the 63-year-old said in his thick Cajun accent. "I've been working for 40-something years. Working in my dad's shop since I was 8. I was sleeping on the floor, handing him tools."

Denise cried when she saw the devastation. She cried harder when the LSU volleyball team showed up to clear it out. Dennis initially stopped the athletes (the baseball team also helped) from discarding unsalvageable items before giving in.

He is now more comfortable moving on. Last week he started a bonfire with his junk. The smoldering chairs appeared hardly out of place considering the nearby rubble that reached 10-feet high. It greets guests at the front of his property with a shattered toilet.

"You can't wait around for the government to come fix your house," Denise said. "You can't wait for the trash to be picked up. You've got to do stuff yourself."

Russell Gage Jr. felt the same impulse after he awoke to more than 10 missed calls from his mom on the morning his home flooded. His sister showed him the rising water via FaceTime. He imagined his grandmother struggling in the frigid water.

"I got nervous," he said. "The water is getting higher."

After several hours without a rescue boat, Gage headed to save his family. But he had no plan as to how. Before Gage left the apartment, Voorhies, a calming presence and self-proclaimed adrenaline junkie, said he was coming, too.

"I'm glad I was there because he wasn't thinking," Voorhies said. "You have to realize this is rushing water."

Once they reached the house, Gage and Voorhies decided first to untie the Gages' two horses and ride them to safety. Without being able to see beneath the water's murky surface, Gage panicked. He worried the horse would slip off to the side and into a deep trench that lined the road.

Gage dismounted so he could nudge the horse to the center, but he misplaced his own footing. He sank more than 7 feet into the ditch. He reached out to grasp the reins with one hand, a desperate effort that, he said, prevented the current from hauling him away.

"I could have died," he said. "And this is in my yard, with my mom and everyone watching."

Voorhies told Gage to head back to the house. Then he guided both horses to dry land.Exhausted and still without a plan, Gage got lucky. He kept his phone in a plastic bag and his girlfriend called him with a number for the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office.

"They thought nobody was on that end of the street," Alisa said.

By the late afternoon, three boats scooped up the family. Gage then drove everyone to a Radisson hotel in his car despite it smoking from the engine and tailpipe. It expired two days later.

His parents are staying there while they slowly rebuild a home they initially built 22 years ago.

"The American Dream is to own your own home," Alisa said, her eyes bloodshot from holding back tears. "You're happy that everybody's safe. But then you're looking at your house, like, oh my god, did this really happen?"

Her son did not process the ordeal either, even on the night of his heroics. Before departing the Radisson, Gage told his parents: "I got to get to practice. I'll be back this weekend."

He usually visits them at home on weekends and feasts on chicken wings after games.

"It hadn't even hit me yet," he said. "I don't have a house."

He planned to meet his family in the hotel room Saturday night. They do not need a house to enjoy the spoils of game day. The chicken wings and the company will be the same.

Hunter Atkins joined the Houston Chronicle in April 2016. He has written for Rolling Stone, Forbes, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, Popular Science and ESPN The Magazine, among others. His assignments have ranged from an investigative article on gun violence in Chicago for Rolling Stone to the story of the world champion in competitive stair climbing for the New York Times.